Statement on last year’s (2011) clerical errors in marking

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10/07/2012

Mark Dawe, OCR Chief Executive, said: “Following the relocation of script handling to our new warehouse for 2011, I am disappointed to have to confirm a number of grade changes as a result of the discovery of clerical errors made last year. I would like to reassure students taking examinations for the first time this year (2012) that I have had our systems significantly improved and this issue cannot and will not affect them.

Mistakes were made by examiners in the transcribing and totalling of marks. These are unacceptable and OCR apologises to students, schools and parents that our high standards for quality and integrity were not met by some individuals during routine processes. I have taken a number of corrective actions to address these matters including terminating four examiners’ contracts, placing another 78 on notice to improve and instituting a new clerical checking regime. It is our job to ensure students get the right results that correctly reflect their knowledge and hard work.

Since these mistakes came to the attention of OCR managers, we have worked for the past nine months to establish the scale of problem, put new systems in place and put right wrong results. Consequently 15 A Level, 28 AS Level, 37 GCSE and 34 GCSE Short Course grades have been improved. A further 81 GCE and 56 GCSE cases have been identified where changes in units taken in 2011 will be factored into students’ final full qualification.

Most changes meant an improvement of one grade, however there were five candidates whose qualification improved by two grades – a GCSE Short Course in Religious Studies from B to A*, a GCSE Short Course in Religious Studies from C to A, a GCSE in English from F to D, a GCSE in Religious Studies from B to A*, and an A Level in Physical Education from C to A. The majority of GCSE changes were for Religious Studies, the majority of A Level changes were for PE.

I would like to apologise again to all the schools, students and parents affected and am confident that our new checking processes will ensure a higher level of clerical accuracy. Furthermore, OCR’s programme to mark all papers on-screen - which will eliminate the opportunity for this type of error - has been accelerated with a target of 100 per cent by 2014, up from 84% per cent this year."

Corrective actions:

Terminated four examiners’ contracts

Instructed 78 other contracted examiners (out of 13,000) to improve their performance

Improvements have been made to the existing quality assurance processes around mark aggregation and transcription. As a result of these:

Messages to examiners about the requirement to use a ‘checker’ have been reinforced, with clear guidance provided on what the checks should entail

Guidance relating to other points at which errors could be identified, such as supervisor sampling, awarding and marking review, and the actions that would need to follow identification of errors, has also been strengthened

Additional transcription checking for all hard-copy scripts

Accelerating the final stages of moving long essay-style answers to online/screen marking (our target is 100 per cent by 2014 – up from 84 per cent this year).

Further information:

OCR examiners are paid an additional 10 per cent to use a transcription and totalling checker

Of the 13,000 examiners contracted to OCR, 1,100 still examine on paper - all have had their work checked

We have informed all 180 schools and colleges affected

One Welsh school was affected. No Northern Irish schools were affected

One large centre had seven changes, three had five, one had four, thirteen had three, twenty four had two and the other 138 had one change only

The number of errors resulting in grade changes found in A Levels were: PE 7, Psychology 2, History 2, Government & Politics 2, Music 1, Performance Studies 1

The number of errors resulting in grade changes found in AS Levels were: Religious Studies 15, Law 3; Performing Arts, History, Music 2 each; Sociology, Classics (Latin), Government & Politics and Performance Studies 1 each

The number of errors resulting in grade changes found in GCSEs were: Religious Studies 21, History 5, English 9, Spanish 1, Turkish 1

The number of errors resulting in grade changes found in GCSE Short Courses were: Religious Studies 34

The scale of the examination system is vast. OCR alone despatched 8.5 million question papers last year, scanned more than 60 million pages of candidate scripts, processed 95,500 requests to access scripts, allocated and monitored, trained and remunerated 16,000 assessment personnel.